The Bishop was referring among other things to events in the towns of Sohag, Fayum and Beni Suef and on the Sinai Peninsula, where churches have been attacked by Islamists and Christians have been threatened. There have also been fatalities. Posted on 08/15/2013 4:13:19 PM PDT by NYer
"The Islamists are taking revenge on us Christians": With these words the Coptic-Catholic Bishop of Assiut, Kyrillos William Samaan, commented on the latest Islamist attacks on Christians and Christian institutions in Egypt.
The bishop made his comments while talking to international Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) on Monday, August 12th.
The Bishop was referring among other things to events in the towns of Sohag, Fayum and Beni Suef and on the Sinai Peninsula, where churches have been attacked by Islamists and Christians have been threatened. There have also been fatalities.
In the town of Sohag, there were reports that Islamic extremists had raised the black Al-Qaida flag over a church.
Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri had accused Egypt's Christians of being jointly responsible with the military and the forces of the Mubarak regime for toppling the Islamist head of state Mohamed Mursi on July 3 of this year.
"This is absurd, of course. 33 million Egyptians had demanded his resignation. We Christians were not the only ones to demonstrate against Mursi," Bishop Kyrillos said.
In view of the current security situation, the bishop said he was worried but that he did not wish to reproach the law enforcement forces. "The police and the other organs of the state are at present busy keeping the Islamists under control."
The Bishop stressed, however, that the climate had changed considerably for Egypt's Christians since the fall of Mursi. "We feel at home again in Egypt," Kyrillos explained.
He went on to emphasize that non-Christian publicists would now speak up for the Christians by stressing that the Christians should not be expected to pay the price of democratization.
The Bishop also saw it as a positive sign that in Sohag or Assiut, for example, moderate Muslims had defended Christian churches against demonstrating Islamists.
"This is the true Egypt: Christians and Muslims are united," Bishop Kyrillos continued.
According to him, this year's message from Pope Francis at the end of the Islamic fast of Ramadan was received very positively.
For the first time the Pope had use the opportunity to address Muslims worldwide personally. In previous years, the letter had been published by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue on the Pope's behalf.
The Bishop criticized the deposed Muslim brothers for refusing to accept the new government's offers of reconciliation.
"The problem is that they still want to have an Islamic state. The majority of Egyptians are happy, however, that this has not come about. They want a liberal state," Bishop Kyrillos claimed.
The bishop is optimistic with regard to the future constitution. A 50-strong committee would soon be revising the constitution drawn up under the Islamist Mursi and adopted by referendum.
Representatives of Egyptian Christians would also be collaborating in this effort.
"All social forces will work on it. I am confident that state and religion will be separated. After all, mixing them is the source of much evil."
The Coptic-Orthodox Patriarch Tawadros II, the head of the largest Church in Egypt, made a plea on Monday for the avoidance of further bloodshed in the face of denominational tensions.
According to media reports, the Patriarch has suspended the weekly audiences in his Cairo cathedral for fear of attacks.
Previously, 16 Egyptian human rights groups had accused the Islamists of stirring up feelings against Egypt's Christians since June 30th, the day of the mass protects against Mursi.
The human rights groups also criticized the state for not doing enough to protect Christian institutions and individuals.
Persecution, ping!
Looks like religious cleansing to me.
Good luck with that. Hey, you don't have any black guys named "Trayvon" in your group? No? Well then you're on your own.
Revenge for what? What did the Christians do to the pedophile worshippers?
Christians will have to start defending themselves or they will be forced to migrate. Islamic thugs like lowlifes everywhere cut and run when confronted.
Exist.
Its not revenge the Muslims are just following what their book says to the letter.
The Protesters knew this was Huge for him to do so, and why we have many pictures of Christians and Muslims uniting that day..... Both were opposing Morsi's Shariah rule, which had begun by the appointments he was making in his administration.
Even so...Pope 'T'S church and others had already been under attack and the people harassed and homes burned since Morsi was elected.... it was free reign for the MBs to act...and they did so under Morsi.
There comes a time when we are all asked to stand against evil when it has rooted itself under falsehoods and deceptions.....Pope 'T' identified and knew that evil first hand and determined to stand against it.
The violent burnings and destruction is what evil does when man opposes it and exposes it...we are seeing that playing out in Egypt now........and get a glimpse how deceptive it is by the lies and deceptions the Brotherhood is portraying to the media as truth....when it's not.
An example, and there are many...are the charred bodies they are saying were burned by the police.......20 bodies were hidden beneath the speakers stage, as are many they discovered today in the burned Mosque. The camp and the Mosque were set fire by the Brotherhood to cover the many deceptions they had been hiding.....and why they are fussing now about the police unwilling to release the bodies to them before they are autopsied. They are being exposed daily...unfortunately the press and the propaganda released by the MBS is not telling it the way that it is...and are unwilling to wait for the evidence now being collected to reveal the truth.
Thank-you for the PING!
Did the brotherhood burn the mosque? That’s the first I have heard of that. Do we have some news sources that can confirm?
Yes and they burned the encampments as well...
Yes we have confirmation and photos on the Egyptian thread...
They burned the camps because they had dead bodies all over the place there and why they were spraying air freshner all the time...forensics are in on the burned bodies...they were restrained with tied hands and feets when they were killed and their bodies had gas or petrolium products poured on them set on fire by the MBS.
@0 alone were found under the stage at rabba...and more in the mosques.
Additionally the people who saw these events and the torture chambers are carefully stepping forward to tell what they saw...they were threatened before and in fact there are videos of injuries inflicted by the mb on people who attempted to tell.
BTW NEWS sources in the US are not the places to go any kind of confirmation...they haven’t a clue of the circumstances going on nor can they see the truth.
When they reported the Mosque was being fired on by the military,.they took that entirely from the people in the Mosques doing their victim routine....when in fact there were terrorists in the minerett firing down on the police and the residents standing outside...a firefight ensued and the people in the Mosques assumed they were trying to kill them...they are hardened parnanoid people in a war zone...they were even afraid the residents were going to attack them.
They have lived weeks in encampments filling them with hate, and anger....and false hope....and deep indoctrination...they cannot reason their circumstances at all...but the news spills it out there just the same.
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